Panther Eye

Excerpt

A MYSTERIOUS DEATH

“He is dead!”

Johnny Thompson felt the grip of the speaker’s hand on his arm and started involuntarily. How could this strange fellow know that Frank Langlois was dead—if he was dead? And was he? They were surrounded by inky blackness. It was the thick darkness of a subterranean cavern, a mine. This was a gold mine. Three minutes ago their electric torch had flickered out and they had been unable to make it flash again.

“C’mon,” said the other man, “Pant,” as the laborers called him, “we don’t need that thing.”

To his utter astonishment, Johnny had felt himself urged forward by this Pant with the easy, steady, forward march of one who is certain of every step. Twice they had turned to avoid mine-props. They had gone back into the mine perhaps a hundred feet. Now, with not a spark of light shining out of the gloom, they had paused and his companion had uttered those three words:

“He is dead.”

Was the man they had come to seek really dead? If he was, who had killed him? How did Pant know he was dead? Surely in that Egyptian midnight no man could see.

As Johnny threw an involuntary glance to the spot where Pant’s face should be, he gasped. Had he caught a yellow glow from one eye of the man? He could not be sure about it, for at that instant the electric torch flashed on again as suddenly as it had gone out.

Johnny’s eyes followed the yellow circle of light. Then with a low exclamation he sprang forward. There, not ten feet before them, lay the form of Frank Langlois. To all appearances he was dead. Again through Johnny’s mind there flashed the telegraphic questions:

“Who killed him? How did Pant know?”

Thrusting the torch into Johnny’s hand, his companion leaped forward and, with a cat-like motion, dropped down beside the prostrate form. Tearing away at jacket and shirt, he bared the breast and placed his ear close down upon the cold flesh.

“Dead all right,” he sighed at last. “Wonder what killed him?”

He still crouched there, as a cat crouches beside its kill. As if he searched for the answer to his last question, his eyes roved about the floor.

This moment of silence gave Johnny time to study Pant, to recall what he really knew about him.

He was a strange chap, this Pant. He never bunked with the other laborers of the outfit, but had a private little pup-tent affair that he had made of long-haired deer skin and canvas. In this he slept. He was slight of build but wiry. Possessed of a peculiar supple strength and agility, he easily surpassed other men of greater weight in everything he undertook, both of labor and sport. One queer thing about him was that he always wore a pair of glasses with smoked lenses of such large proportions that they hid his eyes completely; he was never without them. One more thing, he always wore the Eskimo cut of garments; in cold weather, deer skin; in warm weather and at work, blue drill; but always that middy-styled cloak with the hood attached. And the hood was never off his head, at least not in waking hours....